The Safari!!!!

 

My Murchison Falls Safari Adventure:

Day 1:

We left Kampala at 7:30 a.m., and unlike any other experience in Uganda, that was the scheduled time to leave and we actually honored it! We drove until about 1:30 towards the northwest of the country, closer to South Sudan and Congo before we started the safari with chimp tracking. Unfortunately there were no chimps to be found, but we tried hard, we hiked for about 3 hours, non-stop and covered about 12 km. We did however see a Green Mumba (snake), a turtle, baboons, a red-tailed monkey, black & white monkeys, and a blue peacock-looking bird (I'm horrible with animal names).

I've been struggling with pain in my back, and between falling in the mud, getting ants in my pants (and let me tell you, those suckers pinch and hurt!!!), and hiking for 3 hours I was limping by the time we headed towards camp. Red Chili Hideaway is perfectly situated about 1 km from the Nile, where there are no tsese flies that love mazungu blood, we slept in tents, but they had beds inside...score! The food at the hideaway was really fantastic too: chicken curry, chicken kuku pata, a burger!

After a fun first day with my safari partners; 1 Australian, 2 Americans, 2 Germans and 2 Dutch, we laid low the first evening, probably from exhaustion. The warthogs and hippos, however, did not. They didn't get too close, but they were roaming amidst the camp all night.

Day 2

I woke up this morning and watched the sun rise over the Nile River, right then, my day was made, I had an unforgettable experience. But that was only the beginning.

We took a quick ferry over to the north side of the Nile to begin our 4 hour game drive at 7 this morning. The first animals spotted were antelope, and the second were elephants, elephants running and jumping through the land. It was too far to get good photos, but it was unforgettable to watch. Next came giraffes, and we saw probably 100 giraffes, old ones, young ones, males and females. We saw probably 5 varieties of antelope, and its amazing how different they all are. The water buffalo were great to watch grazing and running. We also saw tons of hippos and different species of birds.

After lunch back at the Red Chili Hideaway we went out for our cruise on the Nile, I drank a beer on the boat called Nile Special, and can now say 'I drank a Nile on the Nile'. The cruise was quite picturesque, but a bit slow-going, toward the end of our 20 km cruise the guide named David said, "Laura, keep watching 1 o'clock, in ten seconds you'll see it". It was Murchison Falls and it was incredible! Over 300,000 cubic meters of water go over Murchison Falls per second! It was the most breathtaking, most majestic experience of my life jumping off the boat and hiking 2 km to the top. It was also, the most demanding physical hike of my life. Worth every minute of pain as I am continuing to limp from my back pain and the 12 km trek the day before to try and see chimps. Words really can't describe it, hopefully my pictures are worth a thousand words!

On our way back to camp we happened across some water buffalo bathing in mud, they do this to keep the flies at bay, what a sight to see! After a cold shower and a nice dinner, we spent our evening looking at the day's photos and chatting around the campfire. Again, it wasn't a late night, maybe I didn't head to bed until 10:30 or 11, but I'm glad I went when I did because within 5 minutes of crawling in bed I started to hear this chomping noise. I looked through the screen in the window of the tent and literally 1 foot from my head was a hippo, it took all self-control to not scream from fright. Who else can say they were 1 foot from a grazing hippo?

Day 3:

I survived the nighttime visit from my hippo friend and some intense wind and finally the rain arrived. We left camp by 8:30 to head home with rhino trekking on the way. Unfortunately about 5 km into our trip the mud had overtaken the exit road, there was one other way to go, but it did add at least 3 hours to our trip, on top of it being rainy and slow-going. We did get to see more of the countryside and I was grateful for that, the surroundings can be anything from tropical to jungle, savannah to farmland, forest to sandy plains, it really is a diverse environment. Seeing villages of authentic African huts was really interesting too.

We arrived at Ziwa Rhino Sanctuary by 2 pm for lunch and some trekking. Luckily, Ziwa is a well-funded, very organized NGO and so we trekked in boots to keep our shoes from getting muddier than they already were and were able to see a mama and baby rhino within a few kilometers walk. We saw the baby nursing and then she got up to graze and let me tell you, regardless of rhinos not being aggressive towards humans I was quite nervous when she came within 15 feet of me!

After 12 hours in the car we finally made it back to Kampala; dirty, exhausted, but completely fulfilled with our expectations for the week. It was amazing to see all of God's creation in Uganda!